


Drown Your Demons

by theuniversalfiction (orphan_account)



Series: Stole the Show [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Actor!Hunk, Alcohol, Angst, Drinking, EMT!Lance, M/M, Minor Character Death, Prompt Fill, Stole the Show AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 13:30:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12558424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/theuniversalfiction
Summary: Working as an emergency responder is hard work on a good day. But on days when everything goes to shit, the consequences follow you home. Lance hadn't wanted to believe it, but after his shift from hell he has no choice.





	Drown Your Demons

It’d been the shift from hell. Twenty-four hours as a first responder shouldn’t have been so bad - hell he’d done forty-eight hours just last week - but today had been something else entirely. 

Maybe the Powers That Be had decided to play him a cruel joke today, decided that they needed him to do penance before Hunk got back from his shooting the latest scene in his movie. Today should have been easy- just another morning after another draining shift, but it had been beyond even him.

Lance prided himself on being able to go with the flow - hell, that’s why he made such a good first responder in the first place - but tonight had forced him to follow a current that had threatened to drag him under. It had been a bad night, to say the least.

Honestly, he didn’t want to say anything else; he just wanted to forget that today had even happened. Everyone in the station knew that their job came with the bad days, with people that couldn’t be saved, but it never felt real until it happened to you. Lance felt like his soul had been weighed down with cement blocks and cast into a muddy well. 

Stumbling through the door to his apartment, Lance tossed his keys in the direction of the entryway’s table, not because he cared about them, but because it was a habit. 

“Where’s the vodka?” he grumbled to himself as he made a beeline to the kitchen in search of alcohol. 

It evaded him, and he tore through his cabinets with a tired frenzy. The words didn’t sound quite right together - after all, wasn’t a frenzy an inherently awake feeling? - but they were the only ones that fit. 

The last cabinet slammed shut and Lance groaned. He couldn’t catch a break, could he? Dragging a hand through his hair, Lance cast a baleful look towards his refrigerator. 

His day called for more than beer, but with his vodka on the fritz, he didn’t have many other options. So, beer it was.

The first drink was bitter, but he welcomed the bite and swallowed it down. He downed a second beer and grabbed a third out of the fridge before relocating to his worn couch in the living room.

Time blurred as the alcohol took effect, and for once Lance found himself appreciating his status as a lightweight. He nursed the third beer and let himself drift.

He knew going into his job that there would be people that he couldn’t save, but he hadn’t wanted to believe it. Wanted to believe he’d be the exception to the rule, that he’d finally catch a break and be the best at something. 

It was illogical. A stupid fantasy, but it had powered him through medical school and brought him to the station. He’d toughed it out, learned to stomach the horrors that the job could entail. They didn’t come along often, but when they did... it was enough to make him thankful that the vast majority of their call-outs were for shortness of breath and falls. 

Those were survivable, at least.

But what he’d witnessed today- he’d failed. There was no other way to put it. People called out for emergency services, put their faith and their lives into a stranger’s hands. Getting them through it alive was the least he could do for them.

But sometimes things went awry. Dispatch couldn’t cover everything, no matter how hard they tried. Sometimes things were fine. 

On nights like tonight, after the road maintenance crew neglected to properly move the loose gravel off the road, it meant that the young man whose motorcycle lost traction and sent him skidding into a tree didn’t make it.

If his neck had fractured even a centimeter lower, he could have survived twenty minutes longer. Sometimes things just didn’t work out that way. 

The front door clicked shut. Lance looked up, eyes empty, and held up his beer in welcome. 

Hunk gave him a concerned look, but didn’t say anything as he took off his jacket and laid it over the back of the couch. He pulled out his phone and checked the time, as if to assure himself that the evening hadn’t snuck up on him when he’d been driving from set to Lance’s apartment.

Normally they’d talk, but Lance’s mute greeting was off-putting. He knew this, but stayed quiet anyway. There was nothing to say; there was too much to say. 

Hunk began to say something and stopped. His hands fidgeted at his sides, playing with the invisible strings of his tangled thoughts. With a sigh, Hunk turned and went to the kitchen. 

Lance didn’t watch him go, but heard his footsteps stop by the fridge. Heard the fridge open and shut. Knew that Hunk’s face was pulled into an uncomfortable frown when the empty beer cans found their way to the recycling bin.

“Is there any particular reason you’re getting drunk on a Tuesday afternoon?” he asked after a short eternity. 

“I just-” Lance faltered and played with the weight of the words on his tongue. There were twenty-three reasons he was drinking, but they were too heavy. His tongue refused to lift the words for those reasons out of his mouth, so he tried something else. “I don’t want to think for a while.”

He didn’t have to look to see Hunk’s nod - saw it clearly in his mind’s eye - and knew that he didn’t have to say anything else. Hunk didn’t always understand the stress of his job, and while there was no doubt in Lance’s mind that there would be questions later, he knew that Hunk understood his need for quiet right now. 

Maybe he didn’t understand the reasons behind the need, but he understood nonetheless. 

Hunk opened a beer of his own and sat on the couch beside him, pulling out his phone to check the news and finish reading the article about liquid metals and soft robots. Lance couldn’t pretend to understand those, but he understood the gesture of distant closeness.

 _I’m here whenever you want to talk._ Something tugged at Lance’s gut, and he took another drink of beer. In forty hours he’d go back in to face his demons.

But right now, he was content to drink.

**Author's Note:**

> Angst with a lighthearted ending, anyone? 
> 
>  
> 
> [I have a tumblr!](http://the-universalfiction.tumblr.com)


End file.
